


An Education in Empathy

by DaemonMeg



Series: A Hint of Jasmine [8]
Category: My Engineer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, M/M, Mash-up, Minor Bon Sirikarnkul/Duen Krisada Rattananumchok, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29812767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaemonMeg/pseuds/DaemonMeg
Summary: Tee is a third year engineering student with a passion for service. After his girlfriend breaks up with him, he escapes more and more into volunteering.Ting Ting is a second year pre-med student trying desperately to balance her studies with what should be the best years of her life. Her grades and her friends are her top priorities and it leads her to end things with her boyfriend.Things become complicated when their best friends start dating eachother.
Relationships: Tee/Tingting (My Engineer)
Series: A Hint of Jasmine [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1776655
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	1. An Irate Classmate

**Author's Note:**

> In the style of L.M. Montgomery. As a writing exercise, I decided to use Anne of Avonlea, a novel in the public domain, as a guide for world building and plotting.

An average looking young man with black hair and brown eyes sat at the table in the center of the Engineering quad one afternoon, resolved to finish three pages of practice questions for physics homework. But an August afternoon, with yellow haze hanging low in the sky and heat coming off the pavers in waves, was better fit for napping in the shade than studying. The pencil soon slipped from his grasp and the pages flitted away in the humid breeze, and Tee, his chin on his folded arms, lazily watched the younger students criss-cross hurriedly through the quad as they tried to make it to their next class on time.

If he must confess, and Tee was usually the first to do so, he rarely took his studies seriously as his heart was mainly occupied by service activities. Starting his first year, Tee had signed up for so many clubs, of which the Engineering Student Association had primacy, but others monopolized his time just as much, including cooking club, community service club, and football. He had tried to stick it out in the future leaders club, but he felt out of depth surrounded by all the international business majors and dropped out at the end of his second year. Tee was just beginning to draw up a plan for his next service trip, he was the secretary of the environmental justice group, when his dreaming was shattered by the most unpleasant interruption.

A tall student with light brown hair and blue utility shirt came scuttling into the quad and huddled behind Tee and five seconds later, Ting Ting arrived. But “arrived” was too mild a term for Ting Ting’s eruption into the quad.

She vaulted over the first picnic table without pause and angrily confronted Tee, who had risen to his feet and stood looking at her in some bewilderment. Tee had not spoken to Ting Ting for several weeks after their break up and they had only crossed paths once or twice over summer break.

In late March, before the end of the second term, Ting Ting had told him that she didn’t have time for dating. Her coursework in the pre-med program was becoming more difficult, and during the time they had seen each other on the down-low since February, her grades had dropped. After that, their two friend groups sometimes hung out, since Bohn and Duen were still dating, but Tee had found excuses to miss most of those get-togethers. 

In the first place, he went back to his parents for summer break and had publicly stated on Facebook he was going on hiatus with social media. Instead, he spent the summer volunteering taking meals to people that were in quarantine or isolation. Finally, Tee just didn’t feel up to seeing Ting Ting again after she ended it when it had barely begun. They had kissed on the first half term break and Tee had spent four months crushing on her until they kissed again over lunar new year. After such a short relationship, most of which he spent in a one-sided love or a secret relationship their friends didn’t know about, he was frankly embarrassed whenever they ran into each other.

All these things flashed through Tee’s mind as Ting Ting stood, quite speechless with wrath apparently, before him. In her most amiable mood, Ting Ting was considered very cute, and all the Engineering students (the ones that liked girls anyway) fell all over her at the service trip last October. She was short, to be sure, but her grey green eyes sparkled whenever she laughed and her smooth, light brown skin looked like the cool desert sand in the morning. Now, with her round face red with rage and her nose scrunched up with anger, Tee thought she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen. 

_ Shit.  _ He wasn’t over her yet.

All at once, Ting Ting found her voice. “I’m not going to put up with this,” she spluttered, “not a day longer. Do you hear, Bohn?” Ting Ting leaned around Tee’s body and shook her finger at Bohn where he still huddled behind him. “This is the third time - the third time! I don’t care what he says. I warned you last time not to make Duen cry again.”

“Ting Ting, what happened?” asked Tee, in his most in-control manner. God he hoped he sounded normal. He wished he would have been in a better state of mind when school began, but apparently the months away had no effect on his heart.

“Trouble. Bohn is nothing but trouble for Duen.” Ting Ting paused then and looked Tee in the eye, hands on her hips. “The trouble is Duen saw him walking out of the restroom with a girl while still tucking in his shirt. Now Duen skipped his afternoon classes and he won’t stop crying.”

“If you mean Am, I wasn’t with her like that. She spilled something on my shirt,” Bohn explained from over Tee’s shoulder. “I didn’t know she did it on purpose or would try something with me when she got me alone. I’m sorry!”

“Sorry! You’re sorry Bohn? You need to stop saying sorry and start telling Duen the truth! Every time you apologize for being caught instead of explaining the situation to Duen, he thinks you don’t trust him!!” Ting Ting was still catching her breath from chasing him down to the Engineering campus.

Tee put out his hands, motioning them both to calm down. “Ting Ting, Bohn wouldn’t lie about something like this. Maybe if Duen trusted him more, he wouldn’t feel like he has to keep apologizing all the time. Trust goes both ways.”

“That’s my point,” snapped Ting Ting, angrier than ever at this point. “He  _ knows _ Bohn isn’t cheating.” She turned to look at Bohn who was pouting, but at least was no longer hiding. “He wants you to  _ talk _ to him about it. He wants you to  _ rely _ on him. He feels like the shittiest boyfriend because you still won’t talk about what that asshole tried to do to you at that camp. And now someone else assaulted you again and you brush it off!”

“Hold up, hold up." Tee finally caught up to what happened when she brought up the incident with Mild. “You can’t make this about Duen. When someone is harassed, you can’t make it about the victim’s faen [boyfriend/girlfriend]. You can’t shame the victim like that.”

“Hey!” Bohn protested. “I’m not a victim. I mean, I  _ am  _ a victim, but I’m not a  _ victim  _ victim. I stopped them.”

_ That’s not how that works _ , Tee thought. Being a victim wasn’t a competition between who had it worst or who was able to stop it. That was half victim-blaming to even say that.

“Bohn, you know that’s not what I mean,” Ting Ting explained. “Duen doesn’t want to make it about himself. He  _ wants _ you to talk about your needs too. You know. So you have someone to talk to if you need or want it.”

It was starting to click for Tee. He turned to his friend who was obviously starting to feel embarrassed. “He wants to be that person that you come to for support and talk about your feelings, I guess. Trust and communication instead of that messy codependency you had going last year.”

“That’s not fair,” Bohn complained.

Tee crossed his arms and just looked at Bohn. “Don’t talk to me about it. Shoo! Go talk to your faen.”

He watched his friend as the gears turned inside that dimwitted brain of his. Suddenly a smile broke over Bohn’s face.

“He’s going to hug and kiss me for so long tonight after I talk to him about this,” Bohn claimed and ran off out of the quad.

“He can’t possibly want to use this to take advantage of Duen,” Ting Ting said after she watched him leave.

“I think you just gave him a new way for them to grow closer,” Tee said. “When Bohn dated people before, none of them ever took care of him. I think if Duen starts taking care of him, Bohn won’t be able to get enough.”

Ting Ting crossed her arms and tapped a finger against her bottom lip and stared at Tee. It made his ears hot and he looked down, rubbing one hand on the back of his neck.

“You talk to King lately?” she asked out of the blue.

“I’ll be glad when the move is over,” Tee said. “It is too much responsibility helping a friend move and nobody seems to have any brain cells. I can’t believe they’re moving in together, but I get it, what with Ram’s household situation and all. I don’t know how much furniture he has, but King never used the bedroom in that condo anyway so I guess there’s room for all his stuff. They’ll need to find a space for the dog crates I guess? King said Ram was bringing them too, which doesn’t make sense  _ at all _ when his mom’s house has a yard and everything. But King said it’s happening, which makes even  _ less _ sense, but whatever.”

“When is the move?” she asked.

“It’s next weekend after the freshy games. King and I have to be hazers for the newbies this year, so we’ll be pretty busy until it’s all over. We had to change up all the games too because of new social distancing guidelines so it will look pretty different than it did when we came in as freshmen.” 

Tee kept running his mouth and stopped even paying attention to what he was saying. It was like seeing her again had let a dam break and he couldn’t shut up. Anything to keep her standing there. He could pick up the scent of her Freesia shampoo from here.

He continued his rambling. “I started a new club this year since I dropped football. It’s for rural community service and I’ve signed up for a booth during rush week.”

“You’re in too many clubs,” she said. “I don’t know how you keep your grades. I can’t commit to that.”

“I know,” he said. “You don’t have time for a lot of things.”

She made a disgusted noise. “That’s not what I meant, Tee. I-”

Mek and Boss walked into the quad then and waved at Ting Ting, tossing their backpacks on their usual picnic table. Their arrival made her drop whatever she had planned to say next. 

Something about the firm line of Ting Ting’s lips told Tee that he’d taken the conversation in a direction that wasn’t good for his health. She left him then, said a few words in a happy tone of voice to Mek and Boss and then left him standing there awkwardly.


	2. Acting In Haste And Repenting At Leisure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ting Ting has a misunderstanding and lets her temper get the best of her.

Ting Ting drove to the shopping mall the next afternoon and took her best friend Tang with her. Tang was, of course, in the same friend group with Phu, Ram, and Duen, and they talked about little else all the way to the shops.

“The very first thing we should do when we meet up with Ram at King’s condo is have that empty bedroom cleaned,” said Tang, as they drove past the open air market, a bustling promenade set in an older part of the city, with sprawling food and jewelry vendors crowding in on all sides. “Have you _been_ to King’s condo? That bedroom was used as a potting room and there’s dirt and vermiculite all over the place. I don’t even want to carry Ram’s things in there before it’s spotless.”

“Maybe that will be the room with the dog crates,” Ting Ting said with a laugh. “Seriously though, we need to do our best to help Ram with this move so he doesn’t have to even think of what’s going on at home. I can’t believe his dad isn’t going to keep paying for the dorm. We’ll need to have a housewarming party afterward too, of course.”

Tang wasn’t exactly sure how a party would help Ram take his mind off his parents’ separation, but was willing to do what was necessary for their friend.

“Ting, I was thinking. Are we ever going to talk about why Ram is moving in with King instead of one of us?” Tang asked. “I mean, it’s no secret at this point how much he’s been staying there. I feel like we’ve all been dancing around this for months. King seems nice, leagues nicer than Ram’s last faen.”

“He’ll talk when he’s ready, and probably when you least expect it. All we need to do is be there for him. And make him buy us some pizza after the move,” she added. Seriously though. She was not going to ask him about King, not after how his last relationship had turned out.

“Oh, he’s going to have to buy a lot more than pizza for moving furniture!” Tang said. “Are you going on Tee’s next service trip? I heard it’s at some school in Chiang Mai.”

Ting Ting made a face. “I thought you were going to Stroke Camp with me. We signed up ages ago with the physiotherapy students.” Every year, their school worked with a non-profit that sent students from the health sciences to a community in Jamaica. It was some Christian group, which bothered her parents a bit at first since they were Buddhist, but a few signed waivers were all Ting Ting needed to get out of the prayer services and just be part of the rehabilitation program. 

“My parents won’t let me leave the country until the number of cases go down,” Tang explained. The positivity rate outside of Thailand was still pretty high. “I’m surprised your parents are still letting you go.”

Ting Ting sighed. “If I still go, I get that scholarship for health mission trips. It’s for more than the cost of Stroke Camp, so I can’t pass that up. Besides, the clinic is vaccinating all the volunteers since they’re patient-facing health workers and I’ll be good to go.”

They pulled into the underground garage, parked, and made their way past the arcade and into the main halls of the mall. Tang picked out a new shirt and Ting Ting loitered outside a Coach store, looking longingly at the bags on display. Just as Tang tried to steer them to the food court, Ting Ting spotted something that spoiled her fantasy of owning any number of those bags.

A young couple walked out of the Coach store arm in arm. The man carried several bags in one hand and the pretty woman hung on his other arm grinning up at him, laughing. It was Bohn. He had his mask pulled up over his nose, but she’d recognize him anywhere. And the woman she didn’t recognize, but she was almost as tall as Bohn with long brown hair pulled back into a half pony and flashy gold earrings.

Ting Ting pushed her own purse into Tang’s stomach so hard, he lost his breath. She didn’t say a word as she marched quickly to catch up to the couple where they strolled unaware of her stalking. They had already passed three more storefronts before Tang understood what was happening.

“Ting!” he hissed. “Stay out of it. Come back!”

The strange woman giggled at something that Bohn said and playfully slapped him on the shoulder, and that was apparently what broke Ting Ting. She charged in front of them to stop them in their tracks and held her arms out in a T-pose. Tang rushed to catch up to them and found himself squaring off across from a surprised Bohn and the confused young woman.

“Bohn! I gave you another chance and what are you doing?! How could you do this?” Ting Ting asked.

Bohn turned to the woman and then back to Ting Ting, holding both hands up in confusion but appearing at a loss of what to say.

The mystery woman pulled her mask down to her chin, put on a slick smile, and addressed Ting Ting, “You must be one of Bohn’s friends, I-”

The woman didn’t get to finish because just as she was speaking, a group of teens walked past Ting Ting and she swiped one of their drinks, popped the lid, and splashed it all over Bohn. The four of them stood there speechless, including Ting Ting, who couldn’t believe what her temper had just led her to do. The teens backed up and watched the drama.

“Bohn? What’s going on?” A familiar voice came from behind Tang and Ting Ting and they both turned in horror to see Duen walking toward them with an ice cream cone in each hand and trailed by Bohn’s nephew Ben.

“Mum!” Little Ben ran toward Bohn and the woman.

“Ting Ting, what are you doing here? Did you do this?” Duen asked. He huddled up next to Bohn, passed him one of the cones, and then began wiping him with the napkins he’d brought from the ice cream shop.

Ting Ting looked on in horror as the woman bent to pick Ben up and put him on her hip. He held out one of the cones for her to lick. “You’re P’Bohn’s sister?” Her expression paled in record time as the blood drained from her face.

The woman just laughed and said, “Don’t worry, you’re not the first girl to throw a drink at my little brother.”

Ting Ting buried her face in her hands while Tang stood awkwardly next to her, still holding her purse. The teens lost interest and wandered off when they realized the drama was over.

After a moment of thought, Tang held out the shopping bag that had the shirt he had just bought for himself. “Here, P’Bohn. At least you can go get changed.”

Five minutes later, they spotted King and Tee walking toward them with King’s nephews and Duen’s niece walking hand in hand between them. Ting Ting groaned and whispered, “This can’t get any worse.”

They were already laughing at her, having seen most of the altercation from where they had been waiting in line for their cones. 

“Don’t even start with me,” Ting Ting insisted when the others walked up to join them. “I’m embarrassed enough as it is.”

“Ting! I know you’re trying to protect me, but please just trust that I know what I’m doing,” Duen said. 

“Ooh, your faen and his friends are so cute!” said Bohn’s sister. Ting Ting learned her name was Packy later. “Look at how protective they are.” 

She and Ben continued to enjoy their cones and grin at them with delight. Bohn, on the other hand, was absolutely _thriving_ having Duen fuss over him. It was rare to see skinship between the two in public, but Duen clearly made an exception for cleaning up his boyfriend.

Tee had been quiet since joining them, but suddenly burst into laughter. “I suppose it’s a good thing I’m not the only one to misunderstand things around here. This more than makes up for the time I thought P’Thara was flirting with Duen. All Bohn did was pout after that.”

That broke the tension in Ting Ting’s shoulders and she began to smile at her misunderstanding while the rest had a good laugh at her mistake. The kids picked up on the mood and quickly began begging to be taken to the arcade in the lower level.

The adults let themselves get dragged down the hall and Tang rushed up to Daoheni and held her hand when Kew and Kram ran off ahead. Tee fell into step next to Ting Ting at the back of the group. 

“So, a playdate, huh?” Ting Ting asked him. “I feel like such an idiot.”

“Yeah. The playdate part, not the idiot part,” Tee quickly clarified. “King’s sister left his nephews with him for the afternoon since he’ll be busy tomorrow with the move. Kind of like a last hurrah.”

Ugh. Why did Tee have to be here and see her act like a fool? It had been awkward enough last week when she ran into him at the “Gear” quad. That was a stupid name anyway. It’s not like they had a “Stethoscope” quad on her campus. All the engineers she’d met were such dorks. 

“I should make it up to Bohn. What does he need? Like a cake, or something?” Ting Ting felt burdened by the scene she’d made earlier.

Tee put a hand on her shoulder briefly to comfort her before jerking it away as if burned. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Look at them. He’s already forgotten with all the fuss Duen is making over him. He’s in heaven.”

“I’m sure I’ll get an earful from Duen later though. He does not let things go. He just doesn’t want to make a scene here,” moaned Ting Ting.

“Do you want me to talk to him for you?”

“No! No.” Why would Tee talk to Duen for her? “This is all my fault. I’m so careful with school but I keep being reckless with my personal life. It seems all I do is make bad choices and then regret them later.”

Tee got really quiet after she said that and stopped talking, letting Ting Ting ramble. After about a half hour of watching the kids drive the arcade cars, she noticed that Tee had disappeared from the group without saying anything. She walked up to Tang and tugged on his sleeve.

“Psst. Did you see where Tee went?” she asked.

He shrugged and gestured down the hall toward the restrooms.

She pointed her chin down the hall and hoped Tang got what she was thinking. He gave her a nod of understanding - they weren’t best friends for ten years for no reason - and she squared her shoulders and headed down towards the restrooms in the hopes that she’d get a chance to talk to Tee alone. 

There was a sweets shop on the way, and she stepped in to buy two sticks of candied hawthorn. Ting Ting intended to apologize to Tee for what she had said, and the candy fruit should serve as a fine peace offering. That is, if he gave her a chance to apologize at all. If _Tee_ had been the one to say he’d made a reckless mistake about his personal life, she absolutely would be hurt and embarrassed.


End file.
